Giorgio Orelli


Giorgio Orelli was an Italian-speaking Swiss poet, writer and translator.
He was born in Airolo in the canton of Ticino and was educated at the University of Fribourg, where he was a student of the Roman philologist Gianfranco Contini. He taught Italian Literature at the Higher School of Commerce in Bellinzona.
Giorgio Orelli was a post-hermetic poet. In the anthology of Piero Chiara and Luciano Erba, he appeared as a poet of the Fourth Generation. Called the Tuscan from Ticino by Gianfranco Contini, Orelli was often associated with the "Lombard Line" of "sober moral realism".
He was also known as a translator of Goethe and Andri Peer. He contributed to various literary magazines. His cousin Giovanni Orelli was also a writer and poet.
Giorgio Orelli died in Bellinzona in 2013. He was the cousin of the writer Giovanni Orelli and the uncle of the alpine skier Michela Figini.

Poetic works

Poems translated in English

Prose

  • Un giorno della vita, Milan, Lerici, 1960.
  • Pomeriggio bellinzonese in Luci e figure di Bellinzona negli acquerelli di William Turner e nelle pagine di Giorgio Orelli, a cura di Virgilio Gilardoni, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 1978.

Translations

Essays

Awards